On Pioneers: BendTel Fiber Ring Attracts Business to Downtown & Old Mill

What is it that makes Bend, Oregon such a great destination for forward-looking companies & individuals? The primary draw for Almus Neff, who relocated to Bend along with his wife and 6 children, was the potential for achieving economic success. That was in 1905, and Neff not only homesteaded 80 acres in Bend; he also helped build some of the area’s most critical early infrastructure in the form of irrigation canals.

Critical Infrastructure Consideration for Relocating Companies

Fast forward 109 years to today, and a new kind of enterprising pioneer is making Bend, OR a top destination: Witness the steady stream of businesses relocating to Bend from areas like Silicon Valley, Seattle, and Portland. And welcoming their arrival with open arms and unlimited bandwidth are Tom Barrett & James Neff. Respectively, Barrett and Neff are CEO and CTO of BendTel, Central Oregon’s sole business-only telecommunications provider. And together, they are creating a critical network infrastructure whose importance to the area’s economy is already surpassing that of the canal irrigation system Neff’s great-grandfather helped construct here 109 years ago.

That infrastructure is BendTel’s fiber ring. BendTel believes its Gigabit fiber is poised to become one of the primary considerations for businesses choosing to move to Bend, especially for tech-forward companies to whom the lure of Gigabit bandwidth are as enticing as Bend’s sunny weather and outdoor recreational opportunities. Now within 60 days of completion, the ring’s inherent redundancy, low latency, and Gigabit bandwidth are backed by BendTel’s network with connections to multiple Tier 1 carriers and extensive peering.

About Ring Architecture

Designed to facilitate up-time by providing a redundant path to each customer, the fiber ring design is favored by network architects. But in the real world many ISPs face the hereditary challenges of older architectures that can’t support Gigabit speeds.

Not so at BendTel. That BendTel is building its fiber network as a ring underscores its origins as a B2B-only telephone & Internet provider born in telecom’s post-deregulation era. In addition to Internet access, BendTel is central Oregon’s only locally owned and operated telephone company and is a telephone systems dealer for Toshiba and NEC.

That competitive spirit has garnered BendTel the business of some of area’s biggest institutions and largest data consumers, and it is looking forward to welcoming its first Gigabit fiber subscribers this fall as the ring draws near completion. To subscribe, contact BendTel: bendtel.com/contact/